The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to a data traffic policy management system.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some IHSs such as, for example, physical server IHSs, are utilized in the provision of software-defined data centers by providing virtual switching systems, virtual storage systems, and/or other virtualized service elements running on the physical server IHSs. Such virtualized service elements are scale-out capable as they may be added, removed, expanded, shrunk, and/or otherwise be modified during run-time. Typically, such physical server IHSs are connected together through physical switch IHSs, which also connect those physical server IHSs to client IHSs. Data traffic transmitted between the client IHSs and the physical server IHSs and through the physical switch IHSs such as, for example, data traffic that includes requests from the client IHSs for data stored on the physical server IHSs or data provided by the physical server IHSs to the client IHSs, is typically referred to as North/South (N/S) data traffic. Data transmitted between the physical server IHSs and through the physical switch IHSs such as, for example, data traffic associated with the retrieval of data stored on the physical server IHSs for provision the client IHSs, data replication traffic, data traffic caching, data backup traffic, data rebuilding traffic, data rebalancing traffic, data traffic associated with failure recovery, etc., is typically referred to as East/West (E/W) data traffic. The transmission of E/W data traffic raises a number of issues.
Some E/W data traffic such as, for example, data traffic associated with the retrieval of data stored on the physical server IHSs for an I/O request from the client IHSs, may be relatively high priority E/W data traffic because it relates to serving the data I/O request initiated by a client IHS. To contrast, some E/W data traffic such as, for example, transient E/W data traffic such as data rebalancing traffic that occurs when a physical or virtual storage system is added to or removed from the system, may be relatively low priority because it is not related to serving the I/O request to a client IHS. However, conventional systems do not distinguish between different types of E/W data traffic due to the complications of managing policies with respect to transient E/W data traffic flows. As a result, all E/W data traffic is given the same priority such that relatively low priority E/W data rebalancing traffic may be transmitted before relatively high priority E/W data retrieval and provisioning traffic associated with a client IHS request. This can lead to delays in satisfying client IHS requests.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system for managing E/W data traffic policies.